For most English people 1966, the year Bobby Moore led the national football team to World Cup glory, is a year remembered with almost misty eyed sentimentality. But as the famous faces who turned out for a movie premiere in Leicester Square on Tuesday night have discovered, not everyone recalls the clash with quite such euphoria.
Small screen favourite Ruby Wax and irreverent comedian Russell Brand were among the celebs who turned out for the debut screening of Sixty Six, which recounts director Paul Weiland's anxiety ridden recollections of the England-Germany match.
In the movie he recounts the story of how his barmitzvah was almost ruined when it coincided with what was, for most of his compatriots, the biggest sporting event of the century. With critics hailing the movie as one of the funniest and best-made family flicks in years, the self-effacing filmmaker seems to be enjoying rather less fraught fortunes these days, however.
Perhaps the only down point of the evening was the absence of Helena Bonham Carter, who plays his mother. The 40-year-old actress had to pull out at the last minute after Billy Ray, her son with director Timothy Burton, broke his arm. "He broke it falling off a sofa," explained a spokesman. "He had to be put under at the hospital to get it fixed and Helena needed to be there. She'd never have forgiven herself otherwise."
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
